Hageland Aviation Services Flight 915
Cessna 207A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Bob Baker Memorial Airport (PAIK) to Selawik Airport (PASK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA008
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 207A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9400M
- Operator
- Hageland Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bob Baker Memorial Airport (PAIK), KIANA, AKTo Selawik Airport (PASK), Selawik, AK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot, and four passengers, departed a remote airport on a VFR scheduled air taxi flight during dark night conditions over snow-covered terrain. The pilot said he obtained weather information from his home computer, pilot reports, and his personal observations. After takeoff, the pilot deviated around an area of small mountains located between the departure and destination airports. The pilot said his deviation was planned to maintain a minimum of 1,000 feet above the ground, and below icing conditions. During the flight, the pilot encountered a snow shower. The pilot said he did not have any outside visual references to navigate by. He depended upon the airplane's directional gyro for course information, and said the gyro rotated to the left, placing the airplane near a mountain. The airplane collided with snow covered terrain about 900 feet msl. Passengers reported they could not see the ground, and were not aware of any problem until the airplane came to an abrupt stop. An area forecast included an AIRMET for mountain obscuration. The forecast also included light isolated moderate rime icing in clouds, and marginal VFR ceilings in snow and mist.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Factors in the accident were a dark night and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA008
- Event ID
- 20001211X11193
- Case number
- ANC99LA008
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-10-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bf747c2990a2da910634d2edf479e50f44531d69f7ccad304931cb2ea268cd09; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:03:16.487Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N9400M; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, EPUA.